Reblogged from MADE IN USA CERTIFIED®:

 
Adriana Barrera Reuters

MEXICO CITY -- The United States is not respecting a World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling on meat labeling, Mexico's Agriculture Minister Enrique Martinez said on Tuesday, saying it was hurting local industry.

The WTO ruled in late June last year that a U.S. program for labeling imported meat unfairly discriminated against Mexico and Canada, putting pressure on the United States to bring the scheme in line with global country-of-origin meat-labeling rules.

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Reblogged from MADE IN USA CERTIFIED®:

Do you want to know what country your food comes from? After May 23, 2013 you will NOT.

There is a TOTAL news blackout on an important FOOD issue that affects us all.

U.S. producers must remove PRODUCT OF USA and the U.S. Country of Origin Labeling (COOL). Currently food products must be labeled with what country they originate from.  93(1)% of Americans agree and support the rules as they exist today. 

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Reblogged from MADE IN USA CERTIFIED®:

By: Martha C. White

By: Martha C. White

If you're angry about the collapse of a garment factory in Bangladesh last week that killed more than 400 people, look at your own closet to see where some of the blame lies.

As Western retailers try to find a way to satisfy demand for cheap clothing while maintaining safety at garment factories overseas, the word "inshoring' has begun to get bandied about as a possible solution.

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Reblogged from MADE IN USA CERTIFIED®:

_______________________________________________________________
R&D/Leverage
MO0AA.0224

1009 SE Browning St
Lee’s Summit, MO64081
816-525-0353
www.rdleverage.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Robert Schiavone
R&D/Leverage
816-872-4839
rschiavone@rdleverage.com

R&D/Leverage® First To Be  “Made In USA Certified®”

Structural Brand Development/Mold Maker

Resurgent U.S. on-shoring of manufacturing holds both supply chain efficiencies and marketing appeal to both customers and employees, according to R&D/Leverage®…

LEE’S SUMMIT Missouri, May 2, 2013 –

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In an article in July 2, 2008 issue of Industry Week magazine, John Madigan, a consultant with Madigan Associates, observed, “Jobs paying $20 per hour that historically enabled wage earners to support a middle-class standard of living are leaving the U.S. Public sector aside; only 16 percent of today’s workers earn the $20-per-hour baseline wage, down 60 percent since 1979.We need to help our youth realize that manufacturing careers, and particularly the advanced manufacturing that now dominates the U.S. industrial sector, creates more wealth than any other industry. Moreover, manufacturing pays higher wages and provides greater benefits, on average, than other industries. For example, in 2010, the average U.S. manufacturing worker earned $77,186 annually, including pay and benefits. The average non-manufacturing worker earned $56,436.

The Society of Manufacturing Engineers Education Foundation (SME) is working to change the image of manufacturing and make it “cool” by sponsoring the “Manufacturing is Cool” award winning, interactive website, which challenges and engages students in basic engineering and science principles and provides interesting and useful educational resources for teachers. This fun and information rich website was recently “re-engineered” (updated) and marketed around the country. SME has received positive feedback from teachers, parents, and students about its usefulness.

“The explosion of technology and advanced manufacturing processes are evolving faster than it can be learned and applied,” says Bart A. Aslin, CEO, SME Education Foundation. “We designed the Manufacturing is Cool website to inspire, prepare and support young people for careers in advanced manufacturing without patronizing them. We’re giving them access to real-world – people, jobs and technologies, all critical to them finding their place in a global economy.”

The site engages students in basic engineering and science principles and provides interesting and useful educational resources for parents and teachers. Today’s tech-savvy K-12 audience can explore the exciting world of advanced manufacturing engineering 24/7 to learn about the careers it offers and how its advanced technologies affect their daily lives.

In 2011, the SME Education Foundation initiated  PRIME® (Partnership Response in Manufacturing Education) as a major national initiative to take a community-based approach to advanced manufacturing education and create strong partnerships between exemplary schools, businesses and organizations. Through its advanced manufacturing education program, SME is re-tooling and building the pipeline with technically skilled workers as business, industry and academia form partnerships and accelerate their collaborative efforts to provide funding, equipment, mentoring, teacher training and co-op programs for high school students to begin manufacturing products in the classroom. The manufacturing sector is on the upswing and public perception of manufacturing as a career is more positive as students see first-hand the kinds of things they are capable of making.

Since 2011, the following schools have been designated as PRIME^® schools:

ALABAMA: Calera High School provides an enrollment of approximately 900 students, grades 9-12, provides a pre-engineering program offers opportunities for student scholastic achievement with science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) curriculum.

CALIFORNIA:

Hawthorne High School, Los Angeles, CA – the School of Engineering and Manufacturing has 347 students and has a rigorous educational program built on the Project Lead the Way (PLTW) curriculum

Esperanza High School, Anaheim, California – a comprehensive four-year public high school serving an enrollment of 1808 students in the northeast part of Orange County.

Petaluma High School, Petaluma, CA – a public high school in which students can self-select a pathway leading to certification at graduation, leading to post-secondary opportunities, credit enhancement, or directly to the workforce.

ILLINOIS:  Wheeling High School, Wheeling, Il – is a public, culturally diverse, four-year comprehensive high school with a STEM providing college credit bearing courses and entry level career certifications including information technology, engineering, architecture and advanced manufacturing. It has a newly equipped fabrication, prototyping lab rivaling local manufacturing companies and a team of engineering students who are quickly becoming advanced manufacturing savvy. The lab includes a 3D printer for rapid prototyping, HAAS CNC lathes and mill, CNC Plasma Cutter, CNC training stations, robotic workstation, surface grinder and more.

“Our students graduate with more than a diploma in hand,” says Dr. Lazaro J. Lopez, principal, Wheeling High School. “Students have an opportunity to leave here with 14 college credits and be on their way to securing an associate degree in manufacturing technology as well as NIMS certification in two or three areas, plus all four MSSC safety certifications. Students who want to work after graduation will be able to meet the expectations of the hiring manufacturer.”

INDIANA: McKenzie Center for Innovation and Technology, Indianapolis, IN. The McKenzie Center for Innovation and Technology houses state-of-the art equipment, materials and curriculum. A high concentration of student population is involved with PLTW courses in pre-engineering and biomedical science. Students receive dual college credit and national certifications in their fields of study.

Walker Career Center, Indianapolis, IN offers 24 career and technical education programs equipped with state-of the-art technology. Each program offers excellent instruction and most programs lead to an industry certification or college dual credit which in most cases, is free to their students.

The Walker Center also provides Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) using Chris and Jim’s CIM, a web resource that makes it possible for students, teachers and even industry pros to find solutions to problems they might encounter with this technology. This resource site, created by CIM educators Jim Hanson of Walker Career Center and Chris Hurd of Cazenovia High School in New York, started as a tool to help their students continue to learn outside of the classroom but developed into a knowledge, research and exploration instrument used by many industry professionals. Chris and Jim’s CIM is another way to help educate and train a new generation of engineers to deal with state-of-the-art technology in designing, manufacturing, maintaining, selecting, and procuring manufacturing engineering systems.

IOWA: Cedar Falls High School provides courses that satisfy elective requirements for World Studies, Personal Economics, Health, Practical Arts, and General Administrative. Because of a partnership with Hawkeye Community College, students may enroll in college-level courses taught during the regular school day. Upon successful completion of the course, students will earn both high school and college credit.

MASSACHUSETTS: Westfield Vocational Technical High School recognizes career and technical education as an integral part of the public school system. Westfield students are prepared for careers which are common in modern industry and offer an abundance of job opportunities upon graduation.

MICHIGAN: The Jackson Area Career Center provides its students with career and technical educational classes, industry certifications, and free college credit, and guidance counseling services. More than 38,000 students have experienced Career Center CTE opportunities and possibilities through hands-on and applied learning.

MISSOURI: Summit Technology Academy, Kansas City – located on the campus of the Summit Technology Center in Lee’s Summit. It is an off-campus pre-professional learning opportunity for high school students seriously interested in the course technology-based courses of study. Professional IT certifications and dual college credit is offered through Metropolitan Community College, University of Central Missouri, Missouri University of Science and Technology, and the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

OHIO:

Centerville High School in Dayton provides a curriculum that includes vocational courses in the Performing Arts, Music, Preparatory College-Career, and the School of Possibilities offering an alternative educational pathway. It also offers 25 Advanced Placement tests in 18 courses in science, mathematics, history, government, language, economics, and psychology.

Kettering Fairmont High School is a public four-year comprehensive high school with a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) based education. A majority of students move on to higher education or specialized training. Kettering is an industrial first-ring suburb of Dayton, Ohio that has a local manufacturing base and is in close proximity to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The curriculum supports these industries with PLTW manufacturing curriculum.

OKLAHOMA:  Francis Tuttle Technology Center in Oklahoma City encompasses six public school districts serving 11,780 students who may attend Francis Tuttle tuition-free while in high school. The Center works closely with business and education partners with specific focus on workforce needs of the marketplace with the delivery of on time, just-in-time, customized training.

WISCONSIN: Lynde & Harry Bradley Technology and Trade School is the premier technology and trade school of Milwaukee and offers a broad range of scholastic options, including clear pathways for students into four-year universities, tech/trade education, and apprenticeships.

During the previous recession, the National Association of Manufacturers heard from its members that they were still having trouble attracting employees with the right mix of skills in certain job functions despite layoffs. To learn more, NAM and Deloitte & Touche conducted extensive quantitative and qualitative research across the U.S. They found that an estimated 80 percent of manufacturers reported a moderate-to-serious shortage of qualified job applicants during the recent recession, a problem growing increasingly urgent with the increase in global competition and retirement of Baby Boomers.

They also found that manufacturing has an outdated image, filled with stereotypes of assembly line jobs, that has kept young people from pursuing careers in it. The “Dream It. Do It^TM” campaign was created because these perceptions are out-of-step with manufacturing’s broad range of interesting and financially rewarding careers. Examples include an electrical engineer for a private jet manufacturer, a product developer for a candy manufacturing plant, or a designer at an MP3 manufacturing company.

NAM’s Manufacturing Institute/Center for Workforce Success received almost $500,000 in November 2004 from Elaine Chao, Secretary of Labor, for this campaign. Over a period of 36 months, the campaign created, tested, and disseminated a growing set of creative materials. These include radio advertising spots, billboard designs, newspaper and magazine ads, student and parent brochures, and a style-branding guide. The materials are ready to use and provide the national brand to local users.

The campaign has formed strong and committed coalitions with local civic, political, education, and business entities; launched a focused advertising campaign; created a world-class website on the array of highly paid manufacturing jobs; and formed local partnerships with community colleges, technical schools and universities for students pursuing manufacturing careers.

NAM’s “Dream It. Do It ^TM” Manufacturing Careers Campaign is currently operating in the following regions:

The SME and NAM programs described above will help expose our youth to the modern manufacturing environment and change the image of manufacturing to one that is “cool” and full of exciting career opportunities for our youth.

Source: http://www.tradereform.org/2013/04/making-manufacturing-cool-for-our-youth/

By Rana Foroohar

The U.S. economy continues to struggle, and the weak March jobs report — just 88,000 positions were added — briefly spooked the market. But step back and you’ll see a bright spot, perhaps the best economic news the U.S. has witnessed since the rise of Silicon Valley: Made in the USA is making a comeback. Climbing out of the recession, the U.S. has seen its manufacturing growth outpace that of other advanced nations, with some 500,000 jobs created in the past three years. It marks the first time in more than a decade that the number of factory jobs has gone up instead of down. From ExOne’s 3-D manufacturing plant near Pittsburgh to Dow Chemical’s expanding ethylene and propylene production in Louisiana and Texas, which could create 35,000 jobs, American workers are busy making things that customers around the world want to buy — and defying the narrative of the nation’s supposedly inevitable manufacturing decline.

The past several months alone have seen some surprising reversals. Apple, famous for the city-size factories in China that produce its gadgets, decided to assemble one of its Mac computer lines in the U.S. Walmart, which pioneered global sourcing to find the lowest-priced goods for customers, said it would pump up spending with American suppliers by $50 billion over the next decade — and save money by doing so (for TIME’s new cover story, written by myself and Bill Saporito, and available to subscribers, click here). And Airbus will build JetBlue’s new jets in Alabama.

Some economists argue that the gains are a natural part of the business cycle, rather than a sustainable recovery in the sector. But I would argue that the improvements of the last three years aren’t a blip. They are the sum of a powerful equation refiguring the global economy. U.S. factories increasingly have access to cheap energy thanks to oil and gas from the shale boom. For companies outside the U.S., it’s the opposite: high global oil prices translate into costlier fuel for ships and planes — which means some labor savings from low-cost plants in China evaporate when the goods are shipped thousands of miles. And about those low-cost plants: workers from China to India are demanding and getting bigger paychecks, while U.S. companies have won massive concessions from unions over the past decade. Suddenly the math on outsourcing doesn’t look quite as attractive. Paul Ashworth, the North America economist for research firm Capital Economics, is willing to go a step further. “The offshoring boom,” Ashworth wrote in a recent report, “does appear to have largely run its course.”

Today’s U.S. factories aren’t the noisy places where your grandfather knocked in four bolts a minute for eight hours a day. Dungarees and lunch pails are out; computer skills and specialized training are in, since the new made-in-America economics is centered largely on cutting-edge technologies. The trick for U.S. companies is to develop new manufacturing techniques ahead of global competitors and then use them to produce goods more efficiently on superautomated factory floors. These factories of the future have more machines and fewer workers — and those workers must be able to master the machines. Many new manufacturing jobs require at least a two-year tech degree to complement artisan skills such as welding or milling. The bar will only get higher: Some experts believe it won’t be too long before employers will expect a four-year degree — a job qualification that will eventually be required in many other places around the world too.

(MORE: Is U.S. Manufacturing Really Back?)

Understanding this new look is critical if the U.S. wants to nurture manufacturing and grow jobs. There are implications for educators (who must ensure that future workers have the right skills) as well as policy-makers (who may have to set new educational standards). “Manufacturing is coming back, but it’s evolving into a very different type of animal than the one most people recognize today,” says James Manyika, a director at McKinsey Global Institute who specializes in global high tech. “We’re going to see new jobs, but nowhere near the number some people expect, especially in the short term.”

Still, if the U.S. can get this right, though, the payoff will be tremendous. Manufacturing represents a whopping 67% of private-sector R&D spending as well as 30% of the country’s productivity growth. Every $1 of manufacturing activity returns $1.48 to the economy. “The ability to make things is fundamental to the ability to innovate things over the long term,” says Willy Shih, a Harvard Business School professor and co-author of Producing Prosperity: Why America Needs a Manufacturing Renaissance. “When you give up making products, you lose a lot of the added value.” In other words, what you make makes you. For more on the rebound in manufacturing and what it means for jobs and economic growth in the US, check out this week’s TIME magazine cover story, “Made In America.”
Read more: http://business.time.com/2013/04/11/how-made-in-the-usa-is-making-a-comeback/#ixzz2QCREv0EC

Source: http://business.time.com/2013/04/11/how-made-in-the-usa-is-making-a-comeback/

 

Source:http://news.wbfo.org/post/town-hall-meeting-address-keep-it-made-america

Adam Shell, USA TODAY

NEW YORK — The benefits of the Made-in-the-USA marketing tag now apply to stocks as well as shoes, SUVs and software.

How so? With Europe hobbled by debt, white-hot China cooling and emerging markets slowing, stocks of U.S. companies that get most of their revenue from U.S.-based sales are performing better than companies that do 50% or more of their sales abroad, where things aren’t going as well.

The part of the world where a company makes most of its money can be the difference between a great investment and an OK one. In the past 12 months, U.S. stocks that generate all sales at home are up an average of 18.6%, vs. a gain of 6.2% for American firms that get more than half their revenue from abroad, Bespoke Investment Group says.

“A major theme of 2013 has clearly been a preference for U.S.-centric stocks,” says Paul Hickey, Bespoke’s co-founder. Why? “The U.S., relative to the rest of the world, is the strongest economy.”

That trend helped drive the Standard & Poor’s 500 index to an all-time closing high Thursday and a 10% first-quarter gain.

Domestically focused companies are also sporting better earnings growth, as well as benefiting from inflows of capital from foreign investors that view the U.S. as a haven, Hickey says.

One of Wall Street’s biggest winners this year is media subscription service Netflix, which gets less than 3% of its sales outside the U.S., says S&P Dow Jones Indices. Netflix shares are up 104%. In contrast, tech player Qualcomm, which gets nearly 97% of revenue from abroad and recently warned of slowing growth in Asia, is up 8.2%.

Analysts also see positives in the All-American story, as they’ve been issuing more positive earnings revisions than negative ones in the past four weeks.

The U.S. market, and particularly, domestically focused names, have held up better than foreign stock markets recently following the “Cyprus Surprise,” the latest bailout in the eurozone to spook global investors. Also driving the better performance is the spate of better-than-expected economic data this month, which prompted Barclays to raise its first-quarter U.S. GDP estimate to 2.6% from 1.6%.

While U.S. shares have performed better than a broad index of foreign stocks for more than two years, the outperformance has been particularly acute since late 2012, when the U.S. averted a fiscal crisis and election-related political gridlock weighed on sentiment.

“Once the ‘fiscal cliff’ negotiations were settled, U.S. stocks rebounded and haven’t looked back,” Hickey says.

source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2013/03/31/american-centric-stocks-sport-big-gains/2022159/

The West has done a very good job of exporting by example its own energy-sucking lifestyle, which is now deemed desirable by the burgeoning middle class in China.

The first time I was in western China, exploring a tributary of the Yangtze River, we got badly lost and ended up on a winding road leading through landscapes I’m sure the Chinese government that had given us the permit never intended for us to see.

All around forests were clear-cut, paper plants were built on rivers above towns, children with deformities were visible in outsized numbers on the streets, and the air was so hazy at midday that many people wore medical masks, even indoors. That was in 1996. Nearly three decades later, things have only gotten worse as China’s human population, energy needs and consumerism have all escalated.

In his new book, The Devouring Dragon, How China’s Rise Threatens Our Natural World, authorCraig Simons expands on the problem, suggesting that the ills of China are not just bad for the Chinese, but one of its biggest exports is now environmental calamity.

The country’s boom times, he contends, are impacting everything from dirty air and water around the globe to fast-climbing temperatures and fast-disappearing wildlife.

China, of course, is not to blame for the fact that the planet is screeching to an inevitable environmental meltdown. The U.S. and Europe have long led that charge thanks to healthy economies and the ability to earn and spend at will. The West has done a very good job of exporting by example its own energy-sucking lifestyle, which is now deemed desirable by burgeoning middle classes in China—and India, Russia, Brazil too.

But pollution created by the world’s biggest nation, 1.3 billion headed quickly to 1.5 billion, is accelerating global environmental problems on a scale not seen before. (Don’t forget those dead, floating pigs.)

- In 2011, China burned more than four billion tons of coal, almost half the world’s total and four times what was burned in the U.S. the same year. By comparison, in 1976, it was only burning 550 million tons.

- The illegal wildlife trade, from elephant tusks to tiger skin pelts and shark fins, is dominated by China’s demand. We are used to stories of excessive wedding parties where every table has a pot of shark fin soup on the table or miniature cityscapes carved from elephant ivory, but as Simons points out, some of the proudest  Buddhists in Tibet still wear tiger skin robes as a sign of success.

- China’s fat pocketbook and voracious energy needs are having an impact far from home wherever fossil fuels are dug out of the earth. The nation has funded natural gas pipelines from Turkmenistan to Kazakhstan, has put $35 billion into railroads “to transport copper and coal out of Africa and into the power plants of China,” and is currently building half of all the nuclear reactors under construction globally. China’s energy and food needs are so big the country is buying up existing power plants from Tanzania to Saudi Arabia and farmland across Russia, Australia and Argentina.

- Dams proliferate across China, none bigger than the one built at the Three Gorges on the Yangtze River. The 360-mile long reservoir that stretches above the dam submerged more than 100 cities and towns and tens of thousands of acres of farmland. A recent Chinese hydrologists report called the Yangtze “cancerous,” and warned that two thirds of it may already be dead—unable to support either plants or fish. Why is the health of the world’s third longest river important? Because it supports 40 percent of China’s economic output and almost one-third of its people.

- While half of China’s 1.3 billion people live simple, rural lives putting very little strain on the environment, as China becomes richer they will worry little about climate change and more about keeping up with the Joneses. One example: In 2000 there were roughly 15 million gas-powered vehicles in China. Today that number has grown to 125 million (about half what we have in the U.S.); by 2030 it is expected to grow to at least 600 million, maybe as many as one billion.

China today—like the other fast-growing mega-nations, especially India—is obsessed with growth. Slowing it down seems impossible. Fueling that growth requires evermore burning of dirty fossil fuels, which turn skies into haze and light rivers on fire.

Simons’ firsthand stories from China today do not fill anyone with great optimism. His conclusion is simple, perhaps overly simple, but hopeful: The world belongs to all of us. We need to decide what matters. And then act.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/environmental-horror-perhaps-china-biggest-export-165014148.html